Ant_astically Speaking (2)

["Kumara Bharathy" <bharathy@paradise.net.nz>]

Antastically Speaking

Kumara Bharathy

Any System is only as good as how it is used. A train engine roaring past a station without compartments may be a good engine, like so many of the organizations that exists for the sole purpose of perpetrating itself. This is one of the basic tenets a co-operative should be aware and keep out of.

A parallel. See what Auvaiyar has to say about earth's bounty in Sangam poetry (Poems of Love and War – AK Ramanujan). What matters is the quality of the people who make use of any system and its intended purpose.

Earth's Bounty

Bless you, earth;

field,

forest,

valley,

or hill.

You are only

as good

as the good young men

in each place

Auvaiyar

Purananooru 187

The frame of Looking – the World view

There are difficulties in life. Some perceived to be real and some real real. But often, this may be so, because of our perceptions and mindsets; that an opportunity may presents itself as difficulty. The mindset makes it appear that a certain situation is uncomfortable and tells us to escape. It is said by the wise that the pain is in the act of escaping and not in the fact of the situation. More over this prevents us from understanding the mental construct of the situation that is so irksome and likely to repeat. So eventually we train our psychosomatic system to react in this way.

Of Shoes and Spears..

Thinking within the constraints of buried mindsets is the real block to creativity. A marketing company sent two salesman among Zulus to report on sales potential of shoes and spears. One person reported that "Here no one wears shoes. Let us forget about these parts, as far as shoes are concerned. However we could sell spears instead". The other one responded " Magnificent opportunity here for Shoes, absolutely no one wears shoes, however selling spears is ruthlessly competitive ". The opportunities are available outside the mindsets.

Knowing when to let go

All this is rank sermonising. That is so, only if I were telling it to you from a pulpit. But actually I am including myself among the listeners and let the Tao master speak for himself about perceptions of a situation. A man fell from a multi story building on a cold dark night. As he was falling down he managed to get hold of a window ledge and hung on. It was bitter cold, his hands were getting numb. Hours passed. He was in great agony and fingers froze and he could hold no more. He fell a feet, to the ground.